


Until We Met

by thetransgirlwhoneverwas



Series: Fictober 2019 [18]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-31 08:09:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21125489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thetransgirlwhoneverwas/pseuds/thetransgirlwhoneverwas
Summary: Liv and Helen visit Helen's old workplace, thirty years later, and think of how much has changed for both of them. How much more change they have to look forward to. And how they'll face it together.





	Until We Met

“Helen.”

“Hmm?”

“You’ve been staring at that portrait for 10 minutes, is everything okay?” Liv asked.

“Clearly you’ve never been to a museum with an art lover before,” Helen replied, not looking away from the exhibit.

Liv’s shoulders tensed. She had done that before, with Martin Donaldson. The man who had fallen in love with her, having repeated the same day over and over and over again for not even he knew that long, while she only knew him for a day. That was in 1921. About fifteen years before Helen was even born, Liv reckoned. She realised she didn’t actually know how old Helen was when she had joined them. None of them knew exactly how old they were anymore, of course. The passage of Earth days was hard to keep track of in a blue box that travelled everywhere in time and space, and though Liv had initially tried to keep up with her own relative age for a while, she had quickly given up, and she knew that Helen had done the same. 1921. Seventy-five years ago from where they were now.

“Did I say something wrong? I’m sorry,” Helen asked. Liv realised she had been lost in thought longer than she had realised. 

She shook her head. “It’s in the past.”

Helen opened her mouth to ask more details, but recognised the look on Liv’s face. Even if she needed to talk about it eventually, now was the wrong time. She tried to change the tone for the merrier. “So, it’s been about thirty years since you picked me up here. 1996. I wonder what brought the TARDIS here?”

Liv shrugged. “Who knows where we’re ever going to end up next?”

“You aren’t wrong,” Helen laughed, and turned her attention back to the exhibit. “I barely recognise this place anymore. I worked in the National Museum for years before the business with the Red Lady, and I can barely remember it. It feels like it was so long ago.”

“Like a different life you led before this one,” Liv offered, thinking back to Kaldor. It felt like she’d never been to Kaldor sometimes; that her entire life there had been nothing but a dream before waking up on Nixyce VII, or the TARDIS, where she felt like she had always been.

“Exactly,” replied Helen. “Like this is where I’ve always been, and everything before was just a prologue to our lives together.”

“We had very separate lives apart from each other, for a long time,” Liv reminded her.

“Yes,” Helen stepped away from the exhibit and wrapped her arm around Liv. “But I feel like mine didn’t really start until we met.”

Liv smiled, and wrapped her arm around Helen in turn, looking at the exhibit she had been staring at. A huge cube, taller than a human, with some sort of intricate symbol carved into each side, looking significantly more modern than anything else at the museum. She wondered about what could be inside the cube briefly, but paid it no real heed. She was too distracted by the real reason she was here. She turned her head to face Helen, still holding onto her. Helen looked at Liv, quizzical, and Liv took the opportunity to give her a lightning fast kiss on the lips. Helen smiled, and kissed her back, then turned her attention back to the cube.

They looked at the cube together, not really paying it much attention, for a while, before Liv noticed a couple of people had started to stare at them. “Helen,” she mumbled, but Helen interrupted her.

“Let them stare,” she dismissed, having realised it too. “I hid who I was for so long, I got tired of it. I don’t care anymore. I’m with you. That’s all I care about.”

Liv smiled even wider this time. “Besides, they should be looking at the artwork, it’s on them really.”

“If they’re staring at you, they’re already seeing a masterpiece,” Helen shot back, trying very hard to suppress a smirk and failing.

Liv gave up and laughed. “That was terrible Helen, ugh, I love you.”

Liv cleared her throat and shook her head, then processed what she had just said at the same time Helen turned her head again to look her in the eyes.

“You...you said…” Helen trailed off.

“I did,” Liv replied, just as surprised as Helen was that she had. She tried to force her head to clear, to force the thoughts down and think logically, but she couldn’t. There wasn’t any logic to what she had said. None of the filters and walls she had built around herself for so many years. She realised that what she had just said was the most truthful thing she had said since she first woke up on Nixyce VII. “And I meant it.”

She returned Helen’s gaze, looking right in Helen’s azure eyes. “I love you, Helen Sinclair.”

Helen blinked. She blinked again. She blinked multiple times in quick succession and shook her head. Then she stopped, took a breath, smiled, and looked back at Liv and said “I love you too Liv.”

They leaned in and kissed again. Some onlookers stared, and one teenager wolf whistled at them, but neither of them noticed, and if they had, they wouldn’t have cared. They were too busy being lost in being in love with each other, and as far as they cared, everything else could fall away to nothing. As long as they had each other, they felt like they could stand forever.


End file.
